Empty Mailboxes.

The hardest part about quitting a volunteer job at a theater co-op is the days spent with empty emailboxes afterwards.

When you first get the gig, you're hounded by emails asking for random things.

"Can you pick-up coach our ensemble?"
"How do I get my password to the site?"
"We need to change our team name on the schedule."
"Our team wasn't on the schedule, what's up with that?"
"Our team fell apart. WHAT DO WE DO?!?"
"We've added some members."
"Where's that handbook that you're supposed to be working on?"

etc. etc. etc.

I got to be REALLY good at answering them, forwarding them onto the right people and if possible, solving people's problems for them. If anything, I would have to say that THAT was my pay for the gig. Being the person that people counted on, to get something done or to take care of them.

Now, though, that's entirely gone away. The only emails that I get are responses to emails that I sent out. Either nobody has any problems to be dealt with or they do and the emails aren't coming to me, anymore.

Most days, I would have 30 to 40 emails waiting for me, when I logged into my AOL account. Now,I'm lucky to have 12 waiting for me. And most of them are from MoveOn.org, breathlessly extolling me to do something, ANYTHING, to route the current president out of office.

I feel a definite loss there, friends. Giving up that job, saved me from making a choice that I didn't want to make and for compromising my job title, but it also effectively isolated me from the business of running the theater.

And my empty emailbox stands as a testament to that.

I'm so bored, with lack of theater business to do and lack of activity on the two message boards and lack of email, that I'm actually going to go do some office work. This is the humiliation that I am lowered to.

Cheers,
Mr.B